Wireless networks have radio frequency (RF) footprints that provide connectivity by a carrier signal connecting remote wireless devices to a network. The ability for a wireless device to connect and remain connected to the network depends upon the signal strength of each carrier frequency. The signal strength of a carrier signal, in part, provides for a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In general, higher signal strength means a higher the signal-to-noise ratio. Higher signal-to-noise ratio means better connectivity for wireless devices within the network.
A wireless carrier of a wireless network seeks to improve connectivity to ensure that subscribers have good communications service. Therefore, it is in the best interest of the wireless carrier to maintain high signal strength. However, a problem that exists for the wireless carrier is tuning the wireless network because turning up signal strength to expand the RF footprint of a cell tower or provide better connectivity within the cell may actually degrade signal-to-noise ratio of the network due to the higher signal strength of one carrier frequency expanding into another carrier frequency or extending into surrounding tower footprints.
To combat the tuning problem, most wireless carriers employ personnel and trucks to drive around the RF footprint and map the signal-to-noise ratio. Measuring the signal-to-noise ratio around the RF footprint enables the wireless carrier to tune antenna transmission power to optimize the network. However, this exercise is expensive as it takes a lot of time and man-hours to record and correlate the signal-to-noise ratio data around the network. Data gathered by a mobile system also lacks the ability to record RF attributes during the same time frame. As a result, not recording RF attributes during the same time frame introduces added error to sampling given power level changes over time. As understood in the art, signal-to-noise ratio changes for a variety of reasons, including other carriers re-tuning their network, demand changes, and buildings being constructed. Because of the constantly changing signal-to-noise ratios, the wireless carrier must constantly tune the network. However, due to the size of a wireless network, the ability to tune the network using conventional mobile measurement techniques is slow.